Watch the original version of American Beauty
Prologue:
The image of Lester Burnham lingered in her mind long after she left his lifeless body on the floor. The familiar scent of his cologne mixed with the rusted smell of blood haunted her nostrils. She closed her eyes, trying to forget, but the memory of his final moments wouldn’t fade.
She was Angela Hayes, Lester’s daughter’s high school friend. Their brief, forbidden affair awoke something desperate in him that she couldn’t quite grasp. It shook her, made her realize how fragile life could be.
After his death, Angela spent weeks avoiding his daughter, Jane, and his wife, Carolyn. She felt guilty, like she was somehow responsible for his demise. But there was more to it than that. Part of her felt like she had lost a part of herself when Lester was gone.
Chapter 1:
Lester stared up at the plain, white ceiling above him. He hated this room – the drab walls, the sterile smell, the mechanical beeps that offered no reprieve. There was no art, no color, no life here. He felt numb, disconnected from the world outside.
A knock at the door brought him out of his thoughts. A nurse peeked through the doorway, her expression unusually bright. “It’s visiting hours, Mr. Burnham!”
He grunted in response and waited for her to wheel him out of the room. As she pushed him down the stark hallway, he noticed the other patients – some asleep, some moaning. It reminded Lester that he wasn’t alone in his suffering, stuck in this dingy hospital for who-knew-how-long.
At the end of the hallway, he saw a figure sitting in the waiting room. Jane. He couldn’t bring himself to look straight at her – his daughter, broken by the news of his health.
“Lester,” she whispered wobbling out of the seat. “I’m here.”
Tears collected in his eyes because of the swell of pride in his daughter’s features.
“Hey, Jane.”
Her sadness was evident with the fullness of her voice. “What the hell happened?”
“I remember being at the office and then…nothing after that.” He wasn’t sure he wanted to share more than that, but something pulled at him to open up to Jane.
Jane wrapped her slender arms around him, leaving pause smaller. This, who he had nearly lost yet again, was wildly humbling, only that one moment.
“I thought I’d lost you, Dad.”
Despite things being tumultuous with Jane over the last period, it was in these terrifying moments all the past raw hurt fell away. He was alive, considering he’d cheated death yet again under unpredicted circumstances.
He clung to her like a lifeline as the overhead announcement told visitors to silently leave the ward. It was squeezing and time was running out on their visit, a paramount theme it seemed for almost anything in life.
Before he allowed Jane to assist him move into the bed overtaking the emptiness he sensed when in his own company, he uttered one sympathetic morsel. “How are you, Jane?”
Her frequent smile faltered. But she kept it strapped across his weakened movements, willingly. There lied a million words she hoped would make it from intake to outtake. When finally quenched out was, “Just happy you’re okay for now.”
When visiting hours were up, she left, and Lester was left alone once more. He grunted bitterly to himself. All of this felt like such a waste. Was this all there was to his life, to love, to happiness?
He closed his eyes and hoped he wouldn’t fade to sleep, to return to being helpless again.
Chapter 2: Boredom
Lester pulled into the driveway of his suburban home, foregoing his usual drive around the neighborhood to think before going inside. On autopilot, he got out of the car and made his way inside. It wasn’t that he dreaded going home; he just didn’t want to think about his current state in life.
He took off his shoes and coat at the door, noting that no one had cleaned up the mess in the living room. His wife, Carolyn, had no qualms about showing her rage through borderline-maddening cleaning outbursts ever since she started experiencing a hiccup in their marriage.
Lester inhaled an overabundance of Asiatic lilies coupled with the formaldehyde maintaining their vase. It made him cringe outwardly still from Carolyn’s self-indulgence, reminding him of the types of beings that he comically attempts putting up with day in, day out.
Throughout Lester’s aimless fuss, feeling lit has been his exhausting barrage of bills and a job that is equal as exhausting—the dealings in change he always manages to cheat while making himself his first-month rent that barely always arrives on the day of the eviction notice.
As he stepped further into the living room, he came across his sack of newly purchased marijuana, acknowledging that it was utterly absurd that smoking dope nightly makes him feel like living at a distance with any stress in his inescapable reality.
Attempting to spot a calming air floating within the turmoil, Lester blocks away towards the kitchen, barely hedging assent by his solitude as he blends an unreal martini with seemingly labored aptitude.
For Lester, setting fire to the accumulated mess had once been entertained in vain for an overwhelming loss of dignity, specifically because that occurred not once, but twice. Tipping a deep preclinal nose had memorably proven harsh heuristics.
Thinking of in-jokes now, Lester compulsively rummages over his empty ice cubes as he vacillates on wishing for wisdom bottled instead of botching answers to pressuring questions that put his desires further delinquent.
He picks up his drink, takes a deep sip, making a grimace while watching the canary in his neighbor’s yard, swiftly taking wing as it soared through the blue crystal sky—dangling a Koi clean out. And for a moment, emboldened by his courage, Lester decides he’ll drastically shift things around. Little did he know how direct and complex the new life turns would swallow him.
Sighing a deep exhale that signifying state of plight reminiscence, sharing its poetry with purging, past life chronic crisis; knowing something ought to vacillate in the exasperation inflicted upon Livy, Carolyn, mass intolerance. Now, perhaps more internal regrets associated with his career struggle cum sobriety achievement in total acceptance.
Lester leans lazily on the kitchen counter drifting into thoughts, embracing right stages of life phases, sipping his martini in utter in-ball between starting something big and resigning himself the solace of convivial, sleek disillusionment.
His life was too dull, too straight, too predictable. He needed to find a way out of it, to change something. Anything. The idea had been creeping up on him for quite some time now; he just didn’t know where to begin.
For the next couple of hours, Lester researched jobs that he could transition to, blogs which exhume affairs experiences make last chance happiness obtainable. Nonetheless, slowly relent, feeling scattered over how false it is if only fixating on personalities that provoked him an almost inescapable, infinite aggravation rather than finding resolution elsewhere. Perhaps finding solace in productive conversations will be the beta escalation the red-hot apocalypse defied affectioops on forces him to grab the horns full speed.
Naturally, he eventually passed out only to wake up next to his angry wife; a straining cry escalating the truth regarding their failed relationship that lit soon though faked care.
Faint laughter enters opening, escaping through a crack beneath the crown-moulding through a cruel but humorous oxymoron, beginning yet another day of discontent desperation or finding adventure in the disorder eventually.
Chapter Three: Infatuation
The warm May sun was casting long shadows from the house onto the backyard. Lester ran his fingers through his hair; he felt ridiculous, dancing under a sky that told him autumn was approaching. But Nanakorobi Yaoki wasn’t laughing at him, so he kept going. As Mr. Smiley music turned into a soothing hymn, Lester felt as though he had left his suburban bubble, and for once had just let go of everything– his job, his family, his fear of change. Even as the fantasy meets reality in Lester Burnham’s life, always remember the music and emotions that the story rises and falls on.
After dancing his stress away, he moved to pour himself a late afternoon martinis. Being from night shift, another Work Day Number Forty-Five would be beat as he usually loves himself devotedly to settling workloads he owes until maybe four in the morning, then sleeps on his computer’s keys till seven, because of Rita’s alarm clock. All uninterrupted, usually consisting of not only he and the old Gateway desk covered with newspapers, old magazines, finance books, his landlines carrying voice mail waiting until tomorrow morning, but sometimes complemented by the easy pleasures in his living room; nightly viewings of Baywatch on the Playboy Channel. Annihilation laced by sex and eye candy. But amidst these images lives an ever-growing sense of emptiness that foreshadows all joys to not last forever. The phone cocks, understandably interrupting his nap. It turns out to be that of his teenage daughter.
“Dad, you better get down here.”
Instead the music cuts out, flashing back to Denise Di Novi / Dreamworks title screen — American Beauty — just short of coming off as cringing. From the aesthetic to the textures caught between Carolyn’s red carriages’ vanity to the best-of-the-best sound production, all was striking.
Soon enough we come to Bertram High School, and conspicuously Lester pulling at clothing, fresh and empowering that what could even be branded as Spring break attire, tinted glasses against a bright autumnal sky along with Styx playing beneath the screen. In front of Lester, stood Angela Hayes— Jane’s confidante, trying to draw him deeper into their connected lives. Theresa is being accused of an offal reason, stuck or affiliated with participating in everything on, with and under the sun after brunch or during dates against Blackbird sound from the Band Of Heathens. Schindler’s List stirred drama happening around the Starch songbird until Lester, feeling disenchanted, ended up walking into the master bedroom, asking who Angela is to Jane.
However, our protagonist learns of Angela driven by her family for perfection, and yet feeling frequently rendered displaced among her own internal and external fights for that beauty-bound existence. Anti-climactic ice-style effect lights lend itself to capturing the sense of the temporary reckoning that at this point in her journey, it merely has led her to snarl and giggle menacingly, both getting her to surely feel Angelic, to some crucial opening moment over Red Line waybreak on Dylan’s Watching The River Flow.
After Lawrence delivers our inciting incident, follows Lester surrendering every part of himself to mutual seduction through an excess of seemingly impossible regaining of youth, order, adding variety to redamianism. Caroline’s cackling unguaranteed deceit tempered in each sip amounting to laughter unwillingly resonant, as Lester reconstructs himself to a youth’s demand of nothingness ties the discussion between Carolyn and Vicki in “Drive.”
Cinematographically accurate, screenwriting magnificence unable to capture A Real Death And A Real Life. Through careful strokes, a camera is allowed to catch up and revisit loved ones’ faces as every soul mark starts to crack or sing with Bruce Springsteen’s sigh-slate of decision, making his return to close intimacy kindling exhilaration. It crawls up angles hearkening his death. He thinks to himself, J. Glagolin flicking the Match In The Dark, life couldn’t understand nothing beyond the screen or the sounds replaying her in her, this illusion somewhat reminiscent of Lane or Lucy’s.
This chapter, Infatuation, details Lester’s obsession with Angela Hayes, his daughter’s friend. He cannot stop himself from staring at her, sidling close, and fantasizing about her every move. The unconventional relationship that grows between Lester and Angela forms the heart of the novel as it aims to question society’s operation and criticisms thereof.
Chapter 4: Confrontation
Carolyn Burnham scrambled around the main hall of their house, her footfalls clanging against the hardwood floorboards of the otherwise staid suburban dwelling. Lester stood in one corner, his arms folded behind his back, wearing nothing but his usual pair of tighty whities. He had ostensibly drawn just as much scorn in doing so as he had by starting a band with a bunch of pot-smoking teenagers, and plenty of ridicule took over the initial heat because of the morning’s developments.
“You were supposed to start cleaning yesterday —” Carolyn clucked irritably, punctuating her opening arguments with a harassed motion of her Sunday-righteous armature. “That was the explicit agreement, remember?” Her steps paused, holding the basket of cleaning goods over his shoulder next to him.
Lester lifted an eyebrow in the direction of the basketball hoops mounted with a purple base clamped onto one of two grass greens by the house. His camera casually scrapped the forms, sliding through virtual distances to see how inconspicuous he looked as he joshed her to stop going Mother Superior mode about it. Then he looked back to Carolyn as they painted a segment page using four’s eye focal length.
“Yes,” Lester replied, sneaking a hand inside them to undo his complex primary insulation system — distinct, expensive raven silky fur lined within black nylon comfort-wear. Swishing the gown from male waist down with a giggle rounding an ample mouth of white teeth, he checked the magnifying lens before scanning the weirdos around him. “That’s when I worked stock quotes two years ago — right? So take a Xanax, okay? You’re becoming so warped up about it if you get any more agitated or uneasy the place will crumble!”
“Get serious, will you?” His grace looked like a lost parolee she couldn’t bear to stop pretending was a mistaken Mary Sunshine as she roared in his headphones. “This situation is real, and it’s rough.”
His toned turned drab. Just keep tucking things deeper down, in and away behind a creased forehead brow of long blonde eyebrows she couldn’t resist the style before the scheduled workplace hours to read her designer kitchen the rest of the weekday morning.
“What kind of man do you provoke, Carolyn?” Running his fingers through his hair, imparting a sense of being a little airier than he felt himself. Cut through the neuroses manner as precisely as a clinic tailor with a nurse flair for crazy yarns wore its twenty-odd babies, he guided his resentment into just remaining out the spotlight of those grass-eyed teens he befriended briefly.
“A man next-door does not disappear because someone doesn’t prefer he exist,” he told her lowering his voice. Carolyn stopped to look at him, the hard mask slipping momentarily away from her carefully pruned countenance, suspicious and crafty, traits pooling easily around itself as old habits were familiar desirables surfacing unchanged by bright disillusionment. The couple stood quietly for a while, stuck in time.
Lester crossed his arms loosely. “Any empty space is filled,” he said cryptically, constantly once again anticipating Carolyn’s forthcoming “what nonsense was that.”
“Excuse me?” Her conking irateness interrupted his slingshot-raising arms. He fought her gaze, avoiding her crumpety staring until she decided to defuse between too-jolly teeth-bearing porcelain tendencies that reemerged fleetingly stressful moments to keep rumors in reset situations.
“Uh, nothing.” He dodged around her suddenly-present hand, extricating himself from the spot lightly. “I’ll let you to your questions to make your calls then.” Smiling thinly he returns to taking pictures of three basketball teammates, two boys and a girl, stuck in mid dynamic action among themselves, unaware of him and the whole transaction.
The incident with Carolyn contrasted curiously with the manifestation of Lester Burnham’s internal state. While in one glance Lester covertly joked about suburban ambiance wherever petty jest could be accepted, daily scandals sparking feisty dish tidbits he and Carolyn bonded over relentlessly in private. It was talking loosely with family and swimming out into dangerous eddies that could just throw anyone into sharks by exposing minutia sting operations, preferably brushed in accusations and flustered topics on a need-to-know basis.
At any rate, that moment was not important enough to hold any serious significance. The void within Lester was steadily less responsive and cumbersome while outsiders started pushing a spectrum of emotions which made all of new-self to him. He greeted the invective storm with flash-backed wide-eyed gazes as bizarre ambient inconsequence, habitually staring impenitently until they break — in argument an avoidant dissociation from burgeoning disagreement happenings commonplace where once they wouldn’t get through. It made him wonder about how disconnected everything really was from one another, these vermillion so-reality interactions that often left him behind for minutes at a time as he absorbed all the pearls of wisdom whizzing around in his head.
Chapter 5: The Deal.
Lester was almost excited about the idea of being a drug dealer with his next-door neighbor, Ricky Fitts. Selling pot was not exactly the ideal scenario, but the idea to strangely feel a connection with someone — wouldn’t that suggest life had some meaning? He began to feel jittery thinking about Ricky and when he might find him at the window with his camcorder. Lester increasingly became desperate for breaks and luck, some accessible lines defining a simple strength-want and a consistent structure infuse several intense chapters.
After almost having sex earlier with Carolyn’s boss made things only harder, thinking of inadequate performance and embarrassed loneliness kept on closing in. Heading downstairs, Lester found his neighbor and woke him up since he does come out and play when other snobs were sleeping. Real scary his words within the subtle violence became fake danger with all external issues’ insecurities dribbling along, but Lester followed closely quick to hand over cash for favors.
Lester cannot escape memories of his own untouchable tragedy stumbling around. Angela was a dream girl-like fixation but felt edgy as Ricky insisted surely there had to be other aspects he felt alive about, so maybe capturing Rick’s video confessions had sexually spurred and led him to answering as “I want to see something beautiful.” This broke up any warning bells of profit greed but still made Lester hesitate knowing Angela’s innocence status was attached to what he needed.
Ricky continued his calm exterior in the process while basements kept spinning violence versus highly-needed satisfaction. Regret surfaced again, and curiosity overpowered Lester as he left Ricky’s pad with a new addiction for Walter Sickert, early 20th-century artist for his chosen influence resembling Johnny Damon’s abs. The camera panned out slowly from Ricky’s window revealing the mass contemptuous society that innocuously expects them the same.
Lester arrived home to another track, noticing first-hand more resentment in Carrie’s seemingly lavish job at Biotechnology, etc.. His character changed; docile yet persistent, Lester holds a stoic quality, almost like the ‘Man with No Name.’ In his every move now he thought about sex, duplicating Bruce Lee-style self-improvement, wanting to collect cash, and waiting for the cops to break the door.
Insecurity jangled his melancholic identity to keep longing for Ricky’s visions as previous bonding slipping away from his grip. This remained, however, the same mundane way of living as Betty tells Carolyn about the deal she finished herself, others go on living the same ritual casual lives.
Lester finds Caroll enjoying jazz. Feeling suspicious yet engaging differently aroused Carol by slowly placing Lester’s hand over her thigh discreetly. Theo people babble away concealed small talks, so far introvert abruptly emerging on innocent material. Mistaken adult enjoyment helped later visualizing self-relevancy then fell in touch with the earlier guilt.
Lester didn’t feel better, though the convenience had come with the fame. It was temporary; things never provide an accomplishment call, only before meaningless… very much like flowers adorned at showing status, and readily waiting for someone to just snatch money and begone. He knew Angela’s hormones hinged shelter needs between get-origins preventing leverage defense, and quite unluckily still going viral.
Thus when her eyes puddle with an asininity-sparkle lights appeared past the suburbs, Lester couldn’t say no. Solely by making Angela’s reckless dreams come true he found ways to control the game. Humiliation stinks but somehow else than pleasure it lets the life story go on repeating its very bloody whim, almost overdosing its psychological importance.
Chapter 6: Redemption
Lester woke up to an awareness that he had just had the best time of his entire life. As he lay in bed thinking about the night before, he realized that until the previous evening, he had almost entirely deprived himself of life’s pleasures. He looked forward to more and entrenched himself deeply thinking about Angela and feelings of emotional freedom that arose from their newfound romance.
But, his euphoria is quickly interrupted when he saw a struggle between Ricky and Angela’s father through the window-roof. This distraction disrupts his position of bliss and exacerbate deeper concerns for a project at work his boss just instated. Later on, he learnt some facts regarding Angela that aroused hidden revelations he never accounted for in their relationship.
In the afternoon, Lester can’t stop thinking about seeing Angela again, so he texts her. Angela responds politely and kindly rejects his offers in having an affair again together after realizing Lester meant to camouflage his carnal feelings through drug-induced opportunities for her career. After her harsh message, Lester crashes in immense depression, negatively recalling the twenty-year-old married housewife after a string of fiasco rendezvous with a crafty blonde boy. He sees all make believe in to be drugged and insultingly demands Angela take her drug money and leave from his house knowing he’s gasped every final last exhilarated stage remaining in him away from our lives.
In one more rapture of brief positiveness, Lester danced remarkably first thing in the merrymaking towards Bach’s keyboard Brandenburg No. 1 like Cameron Diaz in Charlie’s Angels. Plus hallucinated details anticipated the divine.
Finally, after years of burying his true feelings in a pillow, Lester accepts what audiences were rooting from the start as evidence on video and Brian to confess that first infatuation drove him to feel real sensations all along lying in himself unsuccessfully longing for strength summoning the real possibilities, which permanently revolutionized climatic anger towards Chris.
Months later, Ricky goes to jail for the allegation of murdering Angela’s father with limited evidence. Unhappy with Jane’s conventional behaviors and father’s sudden change, he bids fare-fox fires bidding with gory passions to Jane knowing correctly he would ascend to the unknowns “high above the city admiring its beauty and sorrow,” then Lester narrates. The book ends with Carol finding Lester’s already-decaying cadaver being a paying job seeker the whole time as he watches from above as well.
Chapter 7: Death
Lester sat in his chair, savoring his whiskey and listening to the rain outside. He could hear the sound of it beating against the roof of the house, a soothing sound that brought him peace despite the storm brewing inside him. He had finally achieved the freedom he had craved for so long, and everything was quiet and serene.
But that peace was shattered by the sound of a gunshot. Lester’s head snapped up in surprise, his heart pounding in his chest. He had never heard anything like that before, and he knew that something terrible had just happened. He got up quickly, his mind racing as he tried to make sense of what was going on.
As he moved towards the staircase, he noticed something strange in the dim light of the hallway. It was blood, red and glistening, seeping out from a dark shape lying on the ground. A sense of dread soaked through Lester’s body, and he felt as if he was moving in slow motion as he approached the figure lying there.
It was Ricky, covered in blood and clutching a smoking gun in his hand. His face was expressionless, and Lester felt tears prickling his eyes as he realized what had just happened. Ricky had killed his father. He had taken a life, ended a soul, desired to disrupt – and again he had succeeded.
For a moment, everything was silent as Lester stared down at the tragedy that had just occurred. The piece he found by escape, happiness, the emotions that arrived near the despair he had evacuated suddenly left him. The tenderness he felt for Angela vanished, she was way too young forever to have intimate relations. The notion of it stunned him, and tears rolled down his face as tried to hold back his emotions again.
But then he heard footsteps, heavy-footed running up the stairs, and suddenly he knew who it was. He knew who had pulled the trigger, and he realized that he was the next target. He turned, opening his mouth slightly to call for Carolyn or Jane, but he discovered he could not, as he barely caught sight of the dark figure that reached for him to end his life.
Everything became slow and muffled, like a water jet in his ear, or was it that actual? He felt his sleek leather, even smelled his cologne, but he could not land his stance, with something sewed into me he could not quite understand. As if the beating feeling from Ricky, the same emotion and desperate wanted, engulfed him. He was dying, and there would be no final escape. Poverty, carelessness, and illness conspired against Lester to fight the “trap of a terrific imaginary life he had built all for himself.”
As Lester hit the ground, already dead, a mocking voice laughed and said, “You don’t get to tell me what to do ever again.” Angela’s father has shot him, but he looked remorseless, looked like a citizen collecting his mail. It twisted everything he had labored and perceived in life, and all that held vital had gnawed off shadows when finally as the light dreamed—doubting everyone including anyone even a glance at curtains, through vignetting—at society blankly that never could ignite dialogue hearts. Alas, Lester’s miraculous path ended aged far too young at 42, without a defining moment that resolved any resentful inner resistance of existence to simply waste. He disappeared, most people utterly unaware of his existence as if the tribulation till exile claimed his time.
As the rain continued to beat down on the roof, the house was silent. The storm had passed, taking with it the soul of a man who had finally found what he had been looking for. He died for the only reason people perish– he had no left way to avoid eliminating his life to resolve fiction he had built entire existence on. It had finally all caught up with him, encompassing the opinions and phases we all silently have on intimate levels.
Some scenes from the AI movie American Beauty
Title: The Lost Code
Fade in:
EXT. NEW YORK CITY SKYLINE – DAY
We follow the waters down the Hudson River until we reach the bustling cityscape of New York City. Glimpses of yellow taxis, flashing traffic lights, and tall buildings with glass facades dominate the shot.
FADE TO:
INT. LIBRARY – DAY
CARA (28) bends forward at a desk lost in research. She’s a workaholic trying to uncover past truths even as she ignores her biological clock.
CLOSE-UP ON SCREEN:
Cara searches frantically through the archives, typing a search engine that uses facial recognition software to aid her quest for knowledge. “SEARCH: BOY IN 1940 UPPER WEST SIDE, IDENTIFIED.”
BACK TO ROOM:
Cara hovers over her computer as RAMON (65), a muscular security guard, taps her gently.
RAMON
Excuse me, miss. We’re closing now.
CARA
Embarrassed, picks up her papers.
CARA
(in a perky hurried voice)
Time to power-down for today. (INTO PHONE) Lindsey. Can we do nightshifts?
Cara smiles at Ramon before quickly packing up and moving out of the library.
FADE TO:
EXT. NEW YORK CITY STREETS – DAY
As Cara exits the library, her friend, LINDSEY (27), is parked on a red motorcycle down the street from her. Cara rushes over.
CARA
Climbs behind Lindsey.
Where to?
LINDSEY
Lower Deck.
(Noticing the file in Cara’s hand)
Anything good today?
CARA
Shakes her head.
Same old same old.
Lindsey pulls tight sunglasses over her eyes and they continue on.
Scene 2:
INT. LESTER’S OFFICE – DAY
Lester sits in his cubicle, staring blankly at his computer screen. The phone rings, jolting him back to reality.
LESTER:
(Answering the phone) Hello, this is Lester.
VOICE (over phone):
Hey there, Lester, it’s Brad. Look, I just spoke with Mr. Smiley, and he’s going ahead with the restructuring plan.
Lester looks defeated as Brad continues to speak.
BRAD (CONT’D):
I’m really sorry, man. I know how much you put into this company.
LESTER: (whispering under his breath) Well, it looks like I’ll have a lot of time to work on my poetry.
Brad sighs, knowing his friend is taking the news hard.
BRAD:
Is there anything I can do to help out, Lester?
LESTER:
No, Brad. It’s alright. I appreciate it.
Brad nods and hangs up. Lester slumps in his chair and stares off in the distance, contemplating his next move. The world outside his cubicle is disorientating and bleak.
Suddenly, the loudspeaker blares out his boss’s voice pulling Lester out of his thoughts.
BOSS (OVER LOUDSPEAKER):
Will Mr. Lester Burnham come to the front?
Uneasily, Lester rises from his desk and slowly makes his way towards the exit.
Scene 5:
INT. DOCTOR’S OFFICE – DAY
Emma arrives at the doctor’s office, looking nervous. She looks around the waiting room, which is full of pregnant women and couples holding hands. She takes a deep breath and approaches the receptionist.
RECEPTIONIST
How may I assist you?
EMMA
I had an appointment with Dr. Patel today. My name is Emma Lane.
RECEPTIONIST
Of course, let me just check. (scans through computer) Dr. Patel is ready for you, please proceed to room 3.
Emma nods and heads towards the designated room. The door creaks as she enters and she can see a middle age woman with a warm smile.
Dr. Patel extends her hand,
DR. PATEL
Hi Emma, nice to meet you. How can I assist you?
EMMA
(explaining) Doc, I am worried that my inability to conceive may be due to something more severe. I have tried to do everything to get pregnant but with no success.
Dr. Patricia opens her yellow notepad.
DR. PATEL
(handing papers and exercising orders) I totally understand where you coming from Emma, and we will get to the cause of this, starting today let’s do some tests and run some of these orders so that we can have a step forward.
Emma thanks the doctor and exits the room into the barren yet modern white walls of the clinic.
FADE TO BLACK.
Scene 6:
Int. Tara’s Bedroom – Night
Tara is sitting at her desk, poring over her books. Her door suddenly swings open, revealing her father, Clark, who looks utterly distraught.
Clark: Tara, darling… Something awful has happened.
Tara: (alarmed) What? Dad, what’s wrong?
Clark: Evelyn has been arrested.
Tara: (in disbelief) Arrested? Why?
Clark: (with exasperation) For her supposed involvement in Dan’s death.
Tara rises from her desk, a look of shock and concern spread across her face.
Clark: Would you come with me? Her parents are coming, but I think we should be there for her too.
Tara: (nodding) Yes, of course.
Tara grabs her jacket as she hurries after her father towards the door. As they exit the room, Tara spots a menacing shadow moving outside her window. A chill runs down her spine as she turns back to her father.
Tara: (in a shaky voice) Dad, wait, did you hear something?
Clark: (confused) What do you mean?
Tara: (alarmed) I think someone is trying to break into the house.
Clark’s face tightens as he goes to investigate, but as soon as he reaches the living room, a terrifying realization hits him. The house has been surrounded.
Clark: (to himself, in alarm) Oh God, we’re cornered. What are we going to do?
The tension hangs in the air as his voice trails off. Tara’s eyes widen in panic, certain that they could all be killed at any moment. What kind of danger is lurking in their home?
